Clear coat is gone, wax over the base coat?

The clear coat on the roof is nada, for crap, 80% gone and I'm fine with that but I'm about to buff out the rest and I'm wondering if I should just have at the roof like the rest of the truck. Has anybody been in this situation, which path did you follow?

 

You could lightly sand it and coat it again with a rattle can clearcoat.

 

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

You could clear coat it, repaint it entirely, or prep it and vinyl wrap or bed line it.

 

Paints are two stage, they do the color paint and a clear coat over it, the clear coat is gone (common here) on the roof so when I go to buff it I'm asking if I should still apply polish to the base coat or not.

 

Weird, cause you answered the question you had no idea about.

 

Don't use a buffer on that base coat; you'll burn through it easily. Just use some wax and elbow grease. No amount of polishing will bring that roof back to shine, wax it and leave it.

 

Dual action polisher would be more accurate as I wouldn't use some Walmart buffer but yeah that sounds about right, I just want it to have some protection, not too concerned with how it looks.

 

If it were mine, and I couldn't afford a new paint job... I'd just clean it really well with Dawn detergent, wipe it down with alcohol, and then spray it with Rust Oleum gloss clear coat. It'll likely have some orange peel, but you can go over it with some 1500 grit wetsand paper, then 2k grit to smooth it out. Then take some polishing compound to it to buff it out.

I remember back in the early 90's Blue Coral made some type of acrylic in a bottle that was wiped on with a special sponge, and it worked well temporarily, but they stopped selling it. Makes me wonder if you couldn't use one of those acrylic floor polishes like Future or Mop-n-Glo.

 

Based on your situation I guess your truck is either super white or silver. These are the two Toyota colors that are only single stage and are very susceptible to going flat. I had a '06 super white that lost its shine on the roof, hood, and tops of the fenders. After getting a big stone dent in my roof, and eventually a rusty bulls eye, I had my entire truck clear coated. At 175,000 when I got rid of it, it was shiner than it was when it was new. I was lucky, my dealer fixed my roof dent, spot painted the roof, and clear coated my whole truck for $800 ... which IMO was a steal. It looked better than new when finished.

If you can't afford to get it painted, a good coat of wax will give you very little satisfaction but better than nothing.

 

Vinyl wrap FTW

 

My hood and roof on my silver 08 are going to shit also. So frustrating.